Sep 14 STRANDED

My partner and I bought our little country home in June last year. My father in-law* googled the town over and over again. We’d get hourly up-to-date findings, one time at 11pm at night; the history of Newstead, the last floods, how deep the floods were, how many wheelbarrows had lost their lives. We received aerial shots of our neighbour’s backyard and beyond. We’d roll our eyes, the ol’ man was crushing our dreams, we had already forfeited the idea of living in the Yarra Valley due to extreme bushfires and the potential to age 40 years because of the elderly demographic.

We had made it a year unscathed (apart from the brown snake making its home in the hallway - stay tuned for that installment.) Nothing’s gonna stop us now!

It rained last night. I’m writing this from Country Root’s abode. The family is stranded at the Paris end of town and we can’t find our wheelbarrow!

Paul spent last night checking the BOM website every half hour to see how high the Loddon River was getting. I managed to fall asleep but woke up at 4am to what I thought was water torture but was just the roof leaking…possibly caving in. I had to cancel my kiddy dance class because there was no getting into the Maine. I was obvz devo because I had based the whole class around rain, rivers and floods. Paul said we needed to go to Maldon to get petrol, which is bullshit, he just wanted to see how far we could drive before our car went underwater. Cheap thrills over here I tells you! We drove to Maldon, we ate pies from the local bakery, we came back into Newstead, had a leisurely coffee at the café. Paul said “it was BEST if we bought some red wine in case we couldn’t make it back into town”. We picked up our neighbour Ray on the way home, we made it to the bridge. I think what was probably BEST was not leaving our house in the first place.

Unlike Paul’s parents who have been checking in every hour to see how we were getting on I had to text my mum to fish for some sympathy. Her response “Put Pearl up on the bench”. Thanks mum for the handy safety tips and deciding that your granddaughter should go by a different name.

So here we are - stranded with a bottle of wine hanging out with Country Roots…until tomorrow it appears. Our fellas have decided it’s completely acceptable to crack a beer at 10.30 in the morning acting like pubescent school boys who’ve been told they don’t have to go to school.

*Not actually my father-in-law, because we are not married. No pressure Paul.